Chapter 3: The Knight from the East (Part II)

a rain of whistling arrows, muddy meadows;

Fallen knights, broken spears;

The wails of the dead, the flags that are discarded.

Under the hazy sky of hazy drizzle, Lord Levi, who was covered in mud, hugged the flowery Zhao Na sister, sat on the bumpy gun carriage running south with a gloomy expression, looking back at the northern sky, stunned.

DefeatedAs in the original history, the French army was still defeated in the Battle of Cressy and was extremely miserable, stupid and humiliating

In just one night, tens of thousands of soldiers lay in ambush in the wilderness, and the French hoplite knights, who were once proud of Euro 6, were almost swept away on the battlefield

Rao was prepared for the worst by Levi at the beginning, but he still greatly underestimated the strange Cheng dù of this battle, as well as the terrifying power of the English archers, and the stupidity and brains of the French pig teammates

In the Battle of Crecy, the inferior 10,000 British troops fought decently, while the French made almost all the low-level mistakes they could

-- Before the battle broke out, King Edward III carefully chose the battlefield, set up positions on the high ground near the village of Cressie, and seized the time to dig trenches and build fortifications, so that he could condescend and wield his own bow and arrow superiority to meet the French who were forced to climb the mountain and attack on their backs.

On the other hand, just two days after the collapse of the main god system and the forced eviction of the veterans, the 35,000 French troops finally arrived near the battlefield of Crecy, and joined up with a group of 25,000 "village commune volunteers" - although they were actually just a group of serfs who had been driven by the lords and lords, dressed in rags, carrying pitchforks and sticks, and had no battlefield at all, and could only wave their flags and shout strongly, but at least on paper, the total strength of the French army was further inflated to 60,000

From the French's point of view, even if they did not count the serfs who had made up the numbers behind, the 12,000 hoplites and 17,000 light cavalry who were the main force were enough to trample to death the British army on the opposite side, which was mainly composed of light infantry and archers, with a total of less than 2,000 knights.

In short, such a large force made King Philip VI of France and the French magnates more and more complacent, thinking that victory was in their hands, so they did not do reconnaissance or formulate tactics at all, and did not even know where the British army was, so they continued to advance along the road in a chaotic manner. Finally, at noon on the 26th of August, a French lord named Moni arrived with several knights to the King of France, and reported that Edward III's English army had set up positions at Crecy, and that King Jianyì had halted his advance and camped for the night so that the rear could catch up, and then attack again the next morning with the whole army.

As a "knight king" who has always had a heroic name, King Philip VI of France was actually not bad at military quality, at least much better than the Song and Ming emperors in China who stayed in the deep palace, so he was quite rational at this time, so he gladly adopted this correct construction and ordered the whole army to act according to the plan - if this order was really implemented, then the British could be killed by just piling up heads.

-- Although the knights of France were proud and conservative, they were not down-and-out soldiers who were worse than beggars like in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, but combat masters who had honed their killing skills since childhood, and claimed to be able to poke a hole in the city walls on the battlefield of the Cold Weapon Age

At the time of the First Crusade, thousands of French knights led more than 10,000 infantry and servants from Constantinople to the Holy Land of Jerusalem, annihilating hundreds of thousands of Muslim troops along the way, leaving behind a great battle that shook the entire Western world

The problem is that King Philip VI of France had commanded small battles of a few thousand men at best, and Yan Zhòng underestimated the difficulty of commanding a large army of tens of thousands, not to mention that this seemingly huge French army was still cobbled together by hundreds of noble lords from the north and south of the world, and there was no clear subordinate relationship between them, and no one was subordinate to the other - in fact, the French army at this time had already fallen into a state of command failure.

Thus, the French historian recorded the scene of the battle on the eve of the battle as follows: "(After receiving the decree of the King of France) the front man stopped, but the latter said that he must advance parallel to the front row and stop; Since the rear was advancing, the front row could not be stopped, and neither the king nor the marshals could make them stop. So they did not obey the order, but they continued to advance until they saw the enemy, and when the most French troops saw the banner of the British army, they immediately fell into disarray and fell backwards, which again frightened the troops behind them, and thought that a battle had begun. So the road to Cressy was crowded with people, and although they were still three "leagues" (about three miles) from the enemy, they drew their swords and shouted as if they were crazy. It's hard to imagine the chaos unless you're someone there. ”

It can be seen from this that on the real battlefield, the more troops the better, and even if the logistics can still hold up, the command alone makes people crazy -- fortunately, during this period, the British army has been staying in the position and has not taken the opportunity to attack, otherwise the Western version of the "Battle of the Rivers" will really be staged.

In the end, it was not until six o'clock in the evening, when the sun was about to set (the days were long and the nights were short in the middle of summer, and the time of darkness was relatively late), and the French army finally managed to put out a battle position. What's worse is that on the eve of the battle between the two sides, the sky suddenly turned dark, and a downpour fell, although the heavy rain came and went quickly, and after a few minutes the sun showed again, but it had already drenched the French troops in the field.

Anyway, the battle exploded. Traditionally, skirmishes were fought with bows and arrows, and this happened to be the strength of the British - since the "Norman Conquest" in the 11th century, the British have used archery as a "national skill", and according to the rules, all freemen are always armed with bows and arrows (this is why Robin Hood is an archer, the English country militia are archers), and its Welsh longbowmen are famous. The French, on the other hand, with their experience in the Crusader era, worshipped heavily armed knights and did not attach importance to long-range attacks, so they had to hire the Italian Genoyaans as crossbowmen, whose shooting skills were far inferior to those of the British. Not to mention the fact that they were standing in a depression, while the British stayed on the high ground and had to suffer a lot in range......

(So far, it is incomprehensible why the city of Gena has become a banned word on the whole network, and what kind of enmity does that place have with our party and our country?) ）

So, as soon as the battle began, these Italian mercenaries fully waved their cute nature, turned around and fled backwards, and even disrupted the French cavalry that was ready to attack, so angry that the French king roared angrily: "...... Kill the hooligans for me, because they are blocking our line of attack......"

As a result, under the double impact of the British army's rain of arrows and the Italian rout, the first French knights who attacked were in great disorder, and the sky was dark and they could not see the banner clearly, and soon they all broke up, either dead or fled, and even did not see their killers at all.

But no matter what, the French nobles still lived up to their reputation as the strongest knights in Euro 6, and still fearlessly braved the rain of arrows, and continued to charge the British position persistently, and even the French king bravely led the charge himself. They fought from dusk to midnight, and carried out fifteen assaults, even if the battlefield was full of corpses, they still fought to the death - that is to say, the Battle of Crécy was actually a rare night battle in history, and the mere fact that they were able to organize a cavalry group charge in the dark was enough to prove how brave and high the French knights were.

However, blind brute bravery did not bring victory, because the British were attacking the high places from the depression, and the battlefield was very muddy by heavy rain, the impact of the French cavalry was greatly reduced by the terrain, so that it could not break through the British defense. And the chaos of fighting in the dark at night made it even more difficult for the knights to cooperate with each other. What's even worse is that in the entire Battle of Cressie, the French army did not have a specific battle plan at all, and even the French king gave up his command after the battle began, and personally led the charge, so from the French king to the lowliest squire, each group of French knights had only one idea in their minds, that is, to approach the enemy and kill the enemy, so from beginning to end, it has been chaotic. Fundamentally, there is no question of a tactical breakthrough. However, King Edward III of England always firmly controlled his troops, calmly responding to the battle all night, and repelled the French attack after attack.

-- In later history books, Philip VI is recognized as "a good knight and a bad king." Not only did he not make the necessary pre-battle preparations, but he did not even send reconnaissance troops, and ran headlong into the British lines. In the later battles, Philip VI only blindly used the advantage of troops to constantly attack the English front. Although it looks quite chivalric, it leads to fatal consequences.

In the end, after fifteen consecutive failed charges, almost all the noble lords who participated in the French army died or fled, the French army was completely paralyzed, and King Philip VI of France was wounded by an arrow in the head, and was forced to abandon his army and flee from the battlefield, all the way to the city of Amiens. As for the remnants of the cavalry under his command, they completely lost their command after the defeat, and scattered on the spot, and fled to their homes on instinct, running everywhere for a while.

At dawn the next day, heavy rain fell again on the battlefield of Crecy, and the British left their positions and attacked the French infantry, who had lost their commander (the knights were all gone) and were in disarray, easily crushing the men, thus achieving a complete victory in the whole battle.

In this battle, because the captain had shattered the void and returned to the real world, the soft-spoken Lord Levi did not have as much face as him, and he could not speak in front of the French king at all, and his pine cannons were also regarded by the French as siege weapons, and no one wanted to use them in the field.

Therefore, during the campaign, Lord Levi could only stay in the makeshift camp at the rear of the battle line, watching as the blood-boiling French knights bravely marched to their deaths, dying in the endless night by the arrows of the Welsh longbow, or trampled by his own men. When the bullish knights were gone, and the British began to fight back, Levi was gearing up to give the British a taste of cannonballs, but a heavy rain extinguished his possibility of using firearms—his pine cannon was not yet advanced enough to be used in heavy rain.

The routs of their own troops around them, as well as the helmets of the French nobles on the spears of the British army, further reduced the morale of the defenders.

Eventually, in the face of the flood of British troops, the small Knights Hospitaller led by Levi was finally overwhelmed by fear, abandoned the camp in the chaos, and fled south with a few commanders and their backs to the English bows and arrows—fortunately, the dead noble knights and the tents they abandoned provided the British with too much loot to plunder. And the British army, which had been fighting all night, actually didn't have much body left to continue chasing...... In short, Lord Levi escaped from the battlefield smoothly and did not suffer more embarrassing misfortune.

-- The first battle of the traversers, who were originally full of confidence, ended in a hurry, even before they had time to fire a single shot.

The resourcefulness and strength of a few people pale in the huge chessboard of the game between the state and the nation.

At the same time, with the defeat of the last French troops, King Edward III of England ordered the troops to be disbanded to collect the belongings of the dead and the camps abandoned by the French army. It was only then that the British army was surprised to find that among the French nobles who were killed, there were actually the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Lorraine, ten counts, and more than 1,500 noble knights, and more than 10,000 French soldiers killed in the battle. In contrast, the British suffered very small losses, with only two knights, a squire, more than forty infantrymen, and a few dozen Welsh longbowmen.

-- The greatest impact of the brilliant victory at the Battle of Cressy in European history was that it transformed Britain from a remote island nation into a military power. From then on, England's prestige rose to a level sufficient to compete for European supremacy, and England's prestige resounded throughout Europe.

In the past, the victories of the Kingdom of England over the Welsh and Scots on the island of Great Britain were rarely noticed on the European Big 6. The invasion of France by successive English kings, whether won or lost, failed to give England enough shocking honor.

But the Battle of Crécy was an epochal turning point, not only for the French, but also for the British. France was stunned by it, but England was drunk by it - France was bloodily torn off the skin of the great powers, broke the backbone of the hegemons of Western Europe, and sank in disaster and ruin for a century; England, however, saw the glorious dawn of gaining France, overpowering Germany, inheriting the mantle of the ancient Roman Empire, and dominating Euro 6...... Just like the ugly duckling in a fairy tale transformed into a white swan, a remote island country located on the edge of Europe's Big 6, far from the center of civilization, has finally stopped being presumptuous, but has begun to have its own dream of a great power

Thus, just like the Japanese militarism that later conquered the Korean Peninsula and Northeast China, England of the Plantagenet Dynasty began a more crazy Great 6 Raider, and the spirit of the great goal drove the beacon of the Hundred Years War between Britain and France to intensify.

However, for Lord Levi, who had just escaped from the Cressy battlefield, the subsequent effects of this qiē had nothing to do with him.

The war belonging to Knight Levi has already been declared over before it really begins.

Now, his only goal is to return to the port of Marseille – to return to the world, the only place he can call home.

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A month later, in the south of France, on the outskirts of Marseille

By the time the weary travelers made their way through the dense forests to the coastal plains, the western sky was blood-red. The sun was moving down the horizon little by little in a gesture of utter reluctance to silence, slowly closing the golden-red curtain that he had laid out in the clouds and on the ground.

On the other side of the sky, faint starlight was climbing into the sky. Led by the pale crescent, they eagerly announced that the night was approaching, following the steps of the sun, which still occupied most of the sky but was about to leave.

The sound of the waves of the sea came from afar, and the salty smell of the sea breeze came to your face, and you could hear the chirping of seagulls...... At the end of woods, wheat fields, and pastures, somewhere on a small peninsula jutting south into the Mediterranean, a dusty fortress, or rather a high-walled manor house, stands proudly in the twilight. An octagonal white cross flag on a red background, representing the Knights Hospitaller, was fluttering in the wind on the roof of the attic.

Looking at this familiar scene, Lord Levi couldn't help but hold the reins, stopped his horse, and let out a long sigh.

“…… Already home? My dear? ”

Zhao Na, who was drowsy along the way, seemed to feel the breath of the sea breeze and raised her head from Levi's arms - along the way, due to the lack of horses, the two of them always shared a ride, and the relationship became more intimate.

However, Levi did not answer the words of his girlfriend in his arms, but only looked back at his own team—there were still thirty-five people left, and their ranks had shrunk to one-fifth of their original size compared to before they set out on the expedition, and none of the bulky pine cannons were left.

What's even more sad and sad is that after the six veterans suddenly broke away on the eve of the Battle of Cressy and returned to the real world, the remaining two companions from the modern world also returned to heaven one after another, leaving only Levi and his girlfriend Zhao Na, still struggling in this strange Western world:

When the bald man was riding his horse to escape from the battlefield of Cressy, one of them accidentally fell off his horse, and was immediately trampled into a pulp by several horsemen who were rushing to the road, and his head was immediately broken and bleeding, and his sternum was dented, and Levi and his sisters did not even have time to rescue him.

The young man with the head of the hedgehog fled all the way to Paris, but because of the heavy rain on the way to escape, and the long journey, and his weak health, he fell ill with a high fever as soon as he entered the city. If it were in the modern world, such a minor illness would not matter at all. But in this tragic era, life is at stake - as the capital of France, Paris certainly does not fail to hire a doctor, and Levi will certainly be able to afford the consultation. But the problem is that the doctors in medieval Europe are really unreliable, except for bloodletting, they can only have enemas ♂, so after inviting them to see them a few times, the hedgehog head's condition became more and more serious, and even began to coma and talk nonsense, and finally died with a whimper, and even did not even complete the dying prayer.

After burying his companion in a church cemetery in Paris, Lord Livy once again set out on his way south to his garrison in Port Marseille, where King Philip VI of France had been devastated for days after the disgraced defeat of Cressie. The retreating soldiers and horses returned to their hometowns without royal orders and nowhere to receive provisions, and Levi was no exception.

But the road home was not safe, and the defeated soldiers, the knights who had lost the battle and died in the monarch's self-conscious shamelessness, and the Italian hired archers who had been deprived of their commissions by the French king, all turned into bandits in desperation, plundering everywhere, leaving a miasma of smoke along the way.

Thus, instead of being stabbed by the English on the battlefield of Cressie, on the way back to Marseille, he encountered several French bandit knights of all kinds, some of whom were colleagues who had fought side by side under the French flag not long ago...... Those pine cannons did not bombard the British, but instead fired a few rounds of meat on the French, and the reinforcements of the Knights Hospitaller led by him shrank further to more than thirty people.

But, no matter what, after this qiē tragedy, farce and tragedy, they finally returned home.

“…… Yes, we're home, finally home."

After being silent for a long time, Levi finally opened his mouth slowly and said to Zhao Na in his arms.

- Although he may never be able to return to his home in another world, at least here he still has a home of his own.

Thinking of this, the corners of Levi's mouth bloomed with a relieved smile, and he kissed the face of the beautiful woman in his arms, and at the same time stretched out his hand to the manor in front of him, "...... Look, dear, Uncle Diderot has brought someone out to meet us"

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